


Requiem

by cfcureton



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), olicity - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, This is me pretending Season 5 went an entirely different direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cfcureton/pseuds/cfcureton
Summary: My entry for the Olicity Clue Challenge takes place at the end of 5.09. For this little addition, let’s pretend Oliver didn’t go to the Dragon Lady’s apartment at the end of the episode and Not Laurel Lance stayed on Earth 2. Okay? Okay.I’ll let you guess my Person/Place/Thing in the comments. Enjoy the angst! 😉❤️
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67
Collections: Olicity Clue





	Requiem

It’s not like he planned to ever be sneaking into the Bunker under cover of darkness with a bouquet of flowers. Except for the fern—the one Felicity lovingly tended but also adamantly refused to acknowledge—he suspected these were the only non-human living things that had ever been down here. They were white, roses as far as he could tell. He’d bought them at the bodega closest to his house, just a half dozen smallish flowers wrapped in a clear plastic cone. He endured soft looks and sly smiles from his fellow shoppers as he paid for them and then carried them out into the night, back to the Glades and the Green Arrow’s headquarters.

If only those people knew his final destination. And the purpose of his offering.

Rory wasn’t much of a talker—had never been, even as a kid—surrounded by his huge extended family in sunny, happy, Havenrock. His father tagged him early on as an observer; a witness to the ritual of their faith and the daily history of their tight-knit clan. He absorbed family lore and current happenings with equal fervor, mentally cataloging dates and conversations as the years passed in seasons and religious holidays. 

Perhaps it was fitting, then, that the rags had come to him, that they had saved him from the nuclear blast that turned the rest of the Regan/Feldman/Osterburg/and-a-smattering-of-Fenton family to dust and ashes. 

The observer had become the sole rememberer.

Rory made no sound as he descended the stairs into the Bunker. The lights were low, everything shut down for the night after Oliver’s terrible confession that he had killed Billy Malone and his insistence that the team was safer far away from him. It was John who’d eventually sent them home after shepherding Felicity to the couch and Oliver to the shower, assuring the rest of them in low tones that he’d keep an eye on them and everything would be okay. 

Curtis, he suspected, had gone straight home to try and make his worried husband see reason. He couldn’t even guess what Rene would’ve done. That guy was hard to read. Rory had circled the block a time or two, letting the crisp December air clear his mind. The souls entwined in the rags sometimes stayed with him long after he’d taken them off, leaving his thoughts heavy and dark.

He was halfway home when the idea came to him. Flowers weren’t really a thing in the Jewish culture, not for funerals. But his father’s side was also Irish, so he knew a bit about wakes as well, and flowers would not go amiss at an Irish wake. 

If he hadn’t pictured himself creeping into the Bunker to leave anonymous flowers, he certainly hadn’t imagined Oliver and Felicity would still be down there, not talking but communicating intensely all the same. Rory froze in the shadows with his feet on two different steps and watched them, squared off inside a ring of brightness thrown across the floor by a security light. Oliver was back in his Mayor suit, after a fashion, and Felicity was keeping her trench coat closed with both fists, holding herself together so desperately Rory wondered how she didn’t shatter. 

“Do you need me to take you home?” It was spoken so quietly, Rory almost didn’t catch it, but with the hum of the big lights in the Lair turned off Oliver’s low husky voice carried a bit better. He watched Felicity shake her head quickly, a flick of her ponytail that made Oliver drop his gaze to the floor. She said something in reply, something Rory couldn’t catch, but Oliver nodded without looking up. She turned away from him, and for a second Rory thought he’d get caught gawking at them from the shadows, but she headed for the garage entrance on the opposite side of the Bunker, her boot heels clicking at a pace that told him she was trying not to run. 

Rory’s gaze returned to Oliver, standing in the circle of light with his shoulders slumped like the whole world rested on them. He blinked once at nothing and then turned the same direction, but still he waited. Counting to one hundred, maybe, to give her a head start. Something in Rory’s chest caught and ached for them both. He’d never seen them as a couple, but he’d experienced plenty of their work marriage, and he could only imagine the sparks that must’ve flown when they’d been openly together. 

The sound of Oliver’s receding footsteps snapped Rory back to the present; he waited a full minute before slipping down the last couple of stairs and crossing to the Lair. There wasn’t much free space to leave a shrine, but a scan of the area around the computers revealed the most likely spot. He wrestled with the plastic outer wrap until he could extract the first rose; the rest followed more or less easily, though some of the leaves were twisted and limp by the time he was through. 

He felt like a prayer was in order, some sort of ritual to complete the tableau of white roses stacked on Felicity’s keyboard where the glow from her screen saver turned them greenish in the half-light. Rory bowed his head and recited the Mourner’s Kaddish in a low murmur, picturing not only the detective, but his own Havenrock friends and family, Felicity’s tear-streaked face, and the bowed and weary head of Oliver Queen. 

——————————————————-

She blatantly ignored the Keep Your Distance directive—as he had to know she would—clopping down the steps in defiance of the low lights and the quiet. She couldn’t sleep anyway; might as well get some hours in hunting Prometheus.

The Bunker wasn’t damp like the Foundry had always been, but something about it with just the auxiliary lighting and no noise besides the hum from the server room made it feel chilly all the same. Felicity elected to leave her jacket on. 

She knew something was different as soon as she stepped up onto the platform. She paused, her senses suddenly on high alert: she should’ve asked Dig to come with, maybe, or at least let him know she was coming in. Prometheus clearly knew a lot about them, and that knowledge might extend to the location of their base of operations. Felicity started to turn back to get the big lights before her brain registered what she was seeing on the keyboard at her computer station. She took three slow steps forward and stopped a foot shy of the desk.

A clump of long stemmed roses lay across her keyboard, glowing faintly green in the ambient light from the monitor. She took one deep breath and then another, finally reaching out to stroke the petals of one of them, but at her touch it tilted sideways and fell. The roses rolled out of their stack all at once, and suddenly there was a cascade of flowers tumbling off the desk like rain. Like tears. Felicity dropped to her knees as she attempted to scoop them up in her arms; why it was important they not touch the floor she couldn’t say, but she let out a little moan of distress as she fumbled them.

“Felicity?”

It was a whisper laced with concern, and it surprised her but it didn’t make her jump. Part of her knew he’d be down here eventually too.

“S’okay. I’m okay,” she assured him quickly, though tears were clogging her voice and her mouth trembled in a way she suspected was most unattractive. Felicity felt him there, at her back, the energy coming off him both worried and sad. She bowed her head so he couldn’t see her expression.

Oliver shifted his weight but didn’t come any closer, and she couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed. Felicity plucked up the last of the stray roses and got a thorn in her finger for her trouble; she jerked her hand away with a noise of pain and that made him move. In a blink he was kneeling beside her, lifting her gently by the elbow with one hand and relieving her of the flowers with the other, never mind the killer thorns. They probably couldn’t get through his callouses anyway, she thought numbly.

“Did they get you? Here, let me see.”

“Oliver...”

His eyes flicked to her once, a warning not to argue, and then her hand was inside both of his, palm up so he could inspect her fingers. He led the way to the med bay, pulling her so gently it felt like floating down a stream. Row Row Row Your Boat suddenly popped into her head, a half-hysterical giggle with it; she pulled her lips in and bit down hard to stop it escaping.

“I’m gonna turn a light on, okay?” He looked her in the eye again briefly, asking for consent, so she nodded. His hands left her as he turned away and she bit down on herself harder; she shouldn’t want this, the contact with him, but there was so little of it nowadays, and she missed it. God, her boyfriend was hardly cold, but THIS was the man she was thinking about. Self-loathing curdled in her stomach. 

Felicity blinked as the lights came up, feeling more foolish in the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs, all this fuss over a prick from a thorn. But the light revealed a large drop of blood, deep red, resting on her index finger where the rose got her. She made a noise and Oliver glanced back at her and frowned in concern.

“Here.” He turned with a first aid kit, the little one they used for small cuts and minor burns, oddly the rarest of injuries amongst their friends. It made her want to laugh at the absurdity. He absorbed the blood with gentle pressure from a square of gauze and followed it with a band aid smeared with antibacterial cream. Overkill, for sure, but neither of them thought twice about it. It was just their way.

Felicity waited, leaning against the med table, as he cleaned up and restored the kit to its spot, and then they returned slowly, side by side, to the Lair. The roses were still lying in a pile on the desk where Oliver had dropped them in favor of cradling her hand; they stood together and looked at them.

“They’re beautiful,” she said finally.

“Where did they come from?”

She turned her head to study him, head bent and hands in his pockets. “They’re not from you?”

He shook his head once, just a tad. “No.”

Felicity blinked a frown into place but didn’t bother speculating further. She could always go over the security feed if they really needed to know. For now it was enough that the flowers were there, something for the two of them to focus on besides the pain of loss and the uncertainty of the future. 

Which was all a Memorial was meant to be, really.

“Felicity, I’m so—“

“I should start a search,” she said instead of letting him finish. Oliver nodded, his lips pulled in and his hands coming out of his pockets as he stepped aside. Removing himself from her personal space.

“I’ll be...around,” he decided. Felicity nodded at the middle distance and didn’t let herself watch him go. 

She pushed the bunch of flowers gingerly out of her way and got to work.


End file.
